It's been a summer of cliff-hangers in our Gaelic games. (Forget Tyrone last Sunday.) Bad for the heart rate. Gold for Marty Morrissey. Or should that be ". . . goooaaallll", with a pinch of South American/a hint of Clare.
Being a Rossie, Donie Smith's injury-time free kick on July 30th, to equalise for Roscommon against Mayo in that first All-Ireland football championship quarter-final encounter (don't mention the replay!!), was hugely impressive.
To follow that ball after it left his foot was a breathless, out-of-body experience. But to see it sail between the goalposts was very heaven. We lived to fight another day (to be slaughtered, another day!!).
I was on Hill 16 to experience that agony and ecstasy. Watching it later on TV, even knowing the result, did not restrain the hairs on the back of my neck from again standing in salute.
Being a forgiving type with ecumenical tendencies, and a Weshtie, my loyalties then transferred to Mayo. So on August 20th, in that cliff-hanger All-Ireland football semi-final, I crawled under my desk at work (Shh! Tell no one) when in the fourth minute of injury-time, Kerry’s Bryan Sheehan walked up to take a free from 55 metres out. It seemed curtains for Mayo, but his kick fell short.
Joy was unconfined beneath my desk.
All that said, however, nothing this year compared to Joe Canning's last puc of the sliothar in the 74th minute of the match when Galway's hurlers met Tipperary on August 6th. This was an artist at the height of his powers, combining skill, reflex, genius, courage, and a little luck to get that ball over the bar from an impossible, sideline angle and under inhuman pressure.
The fate of his county in this year’s championship rested solely on him. He executed it without hesitation and a confidence that seemed foolish.
But if that beautiful word "sublime" has any adequate explanation, this was it in motion. In 3-D. In Croke Park, before millions across the island and among our diaspora throughout the world.
It is why Galway are meeting Waterford in the All-Ireland senior hurling final tomorrow. And, while I am glad to see Waterford there too, it is Galway I want to win.
Sublime, meaning exalted, noble, superb, majestic. From Latin sublimis, meaning high, sub+limis, limus/limen for oblique and/or lintel or threshold.
Inaword@irishtimes.com
